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Small groups, accompanied by expert tour director For information, please contact: TILLER INTERNATIONAL TOURS 209 Post Street, Suite 1015 San Francisco, CA 94108 (415) 397..1966 Fax 415 3971967 From the kitchen of the famous GREEN TURTLE INN. . . · Turtle Soup Consomme · Turtle Chowder · Conch Chowder · Manhattan Clam Chowder · New England Fish Chowder · New England Clam Chowder · Key Lime Pie Filling MIX or match a 6-pack (16 oz. cans) (Includes shipping) $14.95 GREEN TURTLE CANNERY P.o. Box 585, Islamorada, Florida Keys 33036 Dept. N (305) 664-9595 .. At." /. _ _ _ /11. .,Þ V-'J : ./ I' - f p-"cJ...af- handful. Martial law has not yet been officially lifted, but it is rarely invoked. The mukhabarat is still tough on those Palestinians who are tied to the P.L.O. I t treats Communists, at all times, very arbitrarily. Recently, it has concen- trated on controlling the violent fac- tions in the Brotherhood, but the universities remain the worst places, because anyone speaking out of turn may be arrested, and anyone arrested can spend up to seven years in the mukhabarat prison, usually without being taken to court. I try to defend such people, but I've rarely had any success. Lawyers are never allowed to talk with mukhabarat officials. Still, King Hussein has lately be- come supportive of human rights. In the past, he was above the struggle. Now he encourages organizations for human rights. We have estab- lished groups that are affiliated with Amnesty International, Middle East Watch, the Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights, and some new Arab human-rights organizations. The bar association has a human-rights com- mittee, and so have many of the other professional associations. The journal- ists are particularly active, but an Jordanians have become conscious of human rights, and they are acquiring the courage to go to the court when they see these rights abridged. Not long ago, Amnesty International published a report on abuses in Jordan. The mukhabarat acknowledged some of the points that it made, and the newspapers published comprehensive stories about it. That's a sign that since Maan things really have changed." Within a month of the 1989 elec- tion, several hundred confiscated pass- ports were returned, and applications for passports were being taken from Jordanians who had previously been denied them. Meanwhile, deliberations by leaders across the political spectrum were proceeding on the writing of a "national charter," which the King had requested, to define the role of religion, human rights, and political parties in the state. During my visit, at the opening of the second parliamenta- ry session, the King announced that martial law had been "frozen in prepa- ration for its eventual cancellation," and he reported that the government had "freed all political detainees, reëmployed civil servants who had lost their jobs because of their political affil- iations, and safeguarded the freedoms of work, travel, and movement" He noted that media credibility had risen, and that "the press has assumed its role in a positive climate of freedom and sense of responsibility" Few Jordan- ians seemed prepared to dispute his statements. The enthusiasm with which King Hussein has given himself to democ- ratization suggests strongly that he believes he is leaving behind him something worthy of the Hashemites. That his program has so far worked successfully is surely due to several factors, not the least of them that the J or- danians of today-in large measure educated, travelled, sophisticated, and middle class -bear little resemblance to the Jordanians of the nine- teen-fifties, when democracy and human rights were at their nadir. But the King, paradoxically, has also benefitted from the Gulf crisis, which has unified the population around op- position to foreign (i.e., American) military intervention in the region. "The crisis has given breathing space to Jordanian democracy," Queen Noor said to me, rather offhandedly. "The people are rallying around the King as never before. There is a real sense of family now." The crisis has also meant that the Saudis, who made quite clear that they oppose democratization as a model for the region, have cut them- selves off from their usual meddling in Jordan's affairs. "The success of Jordan's experiment will have an influ- ence on many of the countries border- ing Jordan," Saad-al-Din Ibrahim, a well-known sociologist at the Ameri- can University of Cairo, wrote recent- ly, in the Jordan Times. "Anything that happens in an Arab country has a chain effect in the region." Ibrahim predicted that the nineteen-nineties would be "the decade of democratiza- tion in the Arab world." The King, of course, could conceiv- ably change direction, as he has done from time to time in the past. But most Jordanians are convinced that the country is irrevocably committed to giving the people a real share in gov- ernment. Only a war that decimates the society, they say, can force Jordan from its current course. Unfortunately, they point out, such a war seems to be on the horizon. - MILTON V IORST